Diaper Fish
Ingredients:
1.5-pound cod fillet from the greenmarket fish guy who, according to the nutty unemployed moms on the neighborhood listserv, yelled at someone’s kid for erasing some of the things written on the dry-erase board he hangs in his tent to let people know what he’s got today;
-handful of all-purpose flour
-Salt and freshly ground black pepper
-Splash of olive oil
-Too much butter
-5 cloves garlic, sliced into slivers
-About 1/4 cup assorted, irritatingly spicy olives left over from a weekend visit from family
-Splash of totally fine, no big deal Spanish white from the local liquor store
-Chunks of previously-roasted peeled sweet potato, completely unseasoned because if you weren’t so selfish you’d have pureed them for the baby like you’d intended. although maybe sweet potatoes contribute to his occasional constipation? Either way you’re a terrible parent/person.
1. Season the flour with the salt and pepper even though you know that there is never enough salt and pepper in the world to make up for what gummy bullshit will happen in the pan when you try and sear the fish in the olive oil, because your pan isn’t really hot enough, because you you are impulsive and impatient and therefore bought the first apartment you looked at, a loud, dark first-floor apartment in Queens with a shitty cheap stove, and your guilt-forged middle class values (and, frankly, lack of a credit card) prevent you from replacing it with a brand-name stove that makes it easier for people with disposable incomes to pretend to know what they’re doing in the kitchen but really just brands them as sad, striving pre-menopausal/prostate cancer nightmares.
2. Drink two glasses of wine in rapid succession. Feel a brief flicker of superiority about not having a credit card, followed by crushing guilt over recollection that husband paid off your credit card balance.
3. Husband enters kitchen to ask why cooking food smells “like diaper.”
4. Run with that particular ball by throwing the olives and the sweet potatoes together in the food processor, thinned with a little water. Run the motor until the result looks exactly like some odious baby shit. Serve directly on top of diaper fish, with remaining wine and half of another bottle.
